About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Another Arizona Vigilante Murders Another Arizona Family

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

Yesterday Jason Todd (J.T) Ready, a self-proclaimed American Nazi, murdered his girlfriend and three members of her immediate family - including the woman's granddaughter who was only sixteen-months-old, and an army veteran with recent service in Afghanistan. Ready then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide. The deaths, apparently the result of a domestic dispute, took place in Gilbert, Arizona.

Police reports indicate that hazardous chemicals and military-style munitions were found at the residence where the murders occurred - and the weapons' stash included six anti-tank grenades, the type normally shot from "launchers." The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) is on the case trying to figure out where and how a civilian, especially one as unstable as J.T. Ready, obtained military ordnance.

I have written about Ready before on multiple occasions. The 39-year-old anti-immigrant zealot had been living in the Phoenix area for several years after being dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps. He founded a nativist group called the U.S. Border Guard whose mission was to go into the border area of southern Arizona, heavily armed, and hunt down immigrants who had crossed the border illegally.

Ready had been singled out by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center as being a white supremacist and a nativist. Not only did he found the Border Guard vigilante group, he was also active in local politics and served several years as a Republican precinct committeeman in Mesa, Arizona. Ready ran for city council in Mesa in 2006, but suffered defeat in that endeavor. He also did telephone fundraising for Christian and "pro-life" groups.

Mesa is the same community that spawned former state senator Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona's infamous and highly bigoted Senate Bill 1070. Pearce has spent the greater part of today stating that he and J.T. Ready were little more than passing acquaintances - though Ready himself has described Pearce as his "mentor" and "surrogate father figure." At one time Ready said that Russell Pearce was helping to groom him for national office.

Today there are several photos of Ready and Pearce floating around the Internet in which they are wearing identical American flag shirts. Also on the Internet is an image of a certificate ordaining Jason Todd Ready as an Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - and it bears the signature of the local church priest, Russell Keith Pearce. The certificate is dated 18 July 2004.

The horrendous crimes of J.T. Ready bring to mind another infamous Arizona vigilante - Shawna Forde, a bottle-blonde barfly and ex-beautician who also felt compelled to tackle illegal immigration. She formed her own extremist group to roam the desert in search of people who had sneaked across the border from Mexico. Forde's gun-toting pack of morons called themselves the Minutemen American Defense. Ms. Forde and two of her cohorts were arrested in 2009 for the murder of Arizona resident Raul Junior Flores and his nine-year-old daughter Brisenia in their home near Tucson. The home-invaders also seriously wounded the girlfriend of Flores, leaving her for dead. Shawna Forde was tried for murder in early 2011, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

Defenders of Shawna Forde were quick to blame the killings of Raul Flores and his daughter on Mexican drug cartels. Coincidentally, friends and associates of J.T. Ready have been busy posting accusations on the Internet today that the Ready murders were actually committed by Mexican drug cartels.